Well folks, it’s getting to that time where the rumors are picking up towards CES and even though Samsung have shunned the show in favor of Mobile World Congress when it comes to announcing their latest and greatest, rumors always swirl around them. Unsurprisingly, this time around it’s rumors of the the Galaxy S IV and what the hardware might bring with it and this time around, it might not be as crazy as it could be. In the run up to the Galaxy S III launch held just after MWC there were some insane rumors swirling around and the fact that Samsung didn’t have much of a presence at either CES or MWC only fueled the fire. With the Galaxy S line more popular than it ever has been it looks like history is only going to repeat itself.

When it comes to the processor that’s supposed to be inside the new phone, there’s talk of a quad-core Cortex A15 chip with the model name of Exynos 5450. This makes quite a bit of sense to me as the quad-core Cortex A15 Snapdragon S4 Pro has been in a few phones this year and it’s not like Samsung will want to leave Qualcomm to hog all this quad-core limelight. Also, Samsung have worked hard to deliver the Exynos chip with Cortex A15 inside and is already powering the Series 3 Chromebook as well as the Nexus 10 so the Korean giant has already proved that it can deliver the chips.

Then there’s talk of the camera, which is supposed to be around 13 MP, again, this makes a lot of sense to me and at this point if we don’t see a 13 MP camera in the S IV then Samsung has gotten something wrong. Sony have been shipping decent 13 MP shooters in their Xperia line since the beginning of the year and are Samsung going to let themselves be beaten in the mobile space by Sony? Doubtful.

The part of all this that I have some trouble believing is the inclusion of a 4.99″ 1080p Display. With a display this big and a resolution that high it’ll be the phone that quickly cannibalizes the Note II and leave the Note line to become the phone that has a pen, and that’s about it. Right now, the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note phones are pretty close to each other but at the rate that Samsung is innovating in its Galaxy S line the Note line could become pretty well eclipsed.

So, what are your thoughts? Is there something you feel Samsung should put into the new device to keep ahead of the curve or do you think they need to double down on what they’ve done with the S III?